Homegrown tech cos favorite with professionals in India

If you want to know, where India wants to work in 2018, then look no further than homegrown tech and Internet companies like Directi, Flipkart and One97 Communications that have taken the first three spots on LinkedIn’s Top Companies 2018 list.

The professional networking giant, which has 47 million Indian users on its platform, based its findings on four factors: the interest professionals take in a company, engagement with company’s employees, demands of the job, and employee retention.

Amazon, which held the second spot for the past two consecutive years in the list, is now ranked fourth and Google’s parent company, Alphabet, is ranked seventh. Ola has dropped 11 spots from 5th position in 2017 to 16th this year, and McKinsey & Company has made a significant jump from 24th to 6th. This year, more than 50 percent of the companies are new entrants to the list including Directi (1st), Anheuser-Busch InBev(5th), EY (9th) and Daimler AG (11th) that have given stiff competition to the usual top runners, Adobe (12th), Reliance Industries (24th), and Ola (16th).

“Studying the job interest rates, engagement with the company pages on the platform as well as retention rates, we found several common threads that make these companies the most preferred among Indian professionals. Data shows us that an opportunity to work at solving big problems, rewriting the rules of one’s industry or simply putting a big name on one’s résumé could be powerful motivators,” said Adith Charlie, India Editor, LinkedIn.

As competition for jobseekers intensifies, the 2018 Top Companies have actively deployed employee-first strategies such as flexible hours, a good parental leave policy, and time-off to do more than work to attract and retain good talent.

A special mention needs to be made for the unconventional hiring methods that many companies in the top 25 list follow. Companies are now looking beyond the grades and college rankings to recruit new talent. Directi cherry-picks talent using unconventional techniques such as case studies, tasks like app development and solving the Rubik’s cube. Even CEO Bhavin Turakhia once remarked he “may not get through”.

There’s also a new stress on learning to lead. The top companies have made in talent growth and development an in-house responsibility. EY (9th) last year rolled out a program called EY Badges that allows employees to earn digital certificates for skills like artificial intelligence, data science and data visualization. Nurturing employees to become future leaders, GE (17th) runs eight different leadership programs; and MakeMyTrip (18th) offers a bevy of free courses for its employees, ranging from customised behavioural programmes to study tours to Europe and Southeast Asia.